James Benning’s Re-Creation of Easy Rider Screens at Whitney Biennial

On Sunday (April 6), filmmaker and CalArts School of Film/Video faculty James Benning screens his 95-minute re-creation of the late Dennis Hopper’s 1969 classic feature, Easy Rider, at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York at 4 pm. Benning’s film screens as part of Biennial artist Julie Ault’s Afterlife: a constellation.

For Benning’s Easy Rider (2012), the filmmaker drove across the United States and re-shot scenes in their original locations, “raising questions about the legacy of 1960s counterculture in America’s landscape today.”

In his characteristic long takes, he for instance shows a lit-up vacancy sign while the soundtrack treats us to a line from Easy Rider: ‘You’ve got a room?’ Sometimes the images are more abstract, like the 10-minute shot of a flowing brook.

But there is always a connection with Easy Rider. For example, Benning ‘copies’ its association between a real horse and a gleaming motorcycle: both have their strength expressed in horse power. An image Benning returns to five times is that of a camp fire so that viewers can think back to the scene in which Jack Nicholson expresses one of the film’s themes to Billy (Dennis Hopper) saying: “What you represent to them is freedom.”

With songs by Sadie Benning, Chan Marshall, Suzy Soundz and The Sibleys – the music Benning listened to on the road.

Event Details

James Benning's 'Easy Rider'

April 6, 4 pmKaufman Astoria Studios Film and Video Gallery, Second Floor
Whitney Museum of American Art
945 Madison Ave. at 75th St., New YorkFree with Museum admission. Admittance is on a first-come, first-seated basis until capacity is reached.

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